Exploring light and shadows

"Is there anything more beautiful than a pure, sensitive line? The line is the indispensable skeleton of a painting" Anna-Eva Bergman

At Snøhetta, we believe that art and architecture are intrinsically connected, and that collaboration within these fields lead to unique and inspiring creations. Since its beginning in 1989, Snøhetta has been committed to strengthening opportunities for working with talented artists, curators, art galleries and cultural institutions, with the aim of pushing the boundaries of creativity and creating spaces that inspire wonder and reflection.

With this in mind, Snøhetta embarked on a close collaboration with the mediation teams at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This resulted in several discussions on the links between art and architecture, and the design of a "contemplation booklet" for the "Anna-Eva Bergman Journey to the Interior" exhibition in Paris , and a strong connection to the Foundation Hartung-Bergman in Antibes, dedictad to the art of Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung.

For the Heritage Days in September 2023, the foundation organised a filmed meeting between Snøhetta’s co-founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and Director of the Foundation Thomas Schlesser on the themes of heritage, dicussing both tangible and intangible heritage.  This day was also an opportunity for Snøhetta Studio Paris to spend a day immersed in La Villa in Antibes, a living memory for the artist couple Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung.

During the French Heritage Days, the Hartung Bergman Foundation kindly lent us the upper part of the property so that the 30 members of Snøhetta Studio Paris, founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and artist Jorunn Sannes could create a collective experience linked to the spaces in which the couple Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung lived and created for two decades. Approaching the theme of light, which is omnipresent in Anna-Eva Bergman's work, Snøhetta used the lines of the building designed by the couple to conceive a spatial device materialising the transition from the second to the third dimension.

Once on site, in a place bathed in sunlight and framed by the pure volumes of the house, the group began to reflect on the relationship between light and shadow and their physical materiality. How can we capture the traces of what was once shadow, and make the lines of the ephemeral perceptible in the long term? The reflection also focused on the emergence of forms through the creation of a new volume between the horizontal shadow and the vertical building.

Snøhetta chose to materialise this passage using blue tape. In a short space of time, requiring a controlled choreography, the agency installed a device that consisted of tracing the limits of the shadows cast by these lines on the ground. This experiment gave rise to a photographic report and a film edited from drone footage that showed the poetry of this collective approach. The traces of the Workshop were left in place for visitors to the Foundation during the Heritage Days.

We would like to thank the Hartung-Bergman Foundation for its warm welcome and invaluable support in organising this workshop. We would also like to thank the Foundation for its constructive and enriching dialogue with the agency, which enabled us to stage our reflections on the artist's work.